Air India Pushes Ahead With Bringing MRO In-House

LONDON—Air India has broken ground on a new in-house base maintenance facility that will become operational in 2026. Meanwhile, the carrier continues to face cabin interior delays, impacting its fleet modernization.

Two years ago, Air India was privatized, taking it under the ownership of Indian conglomerate Tata Group. Since then, the airline has been working to bring maintenance back in house, while also rolling out a substantial fleet upgrade program.

Air India CEO Campbell Wilson said during a meeting of the UK’s Aviation Club here that the airline’s facilities were “dilapidated” and “poorly maintained” when he joined the “chronically lost-making” airline in June 2022. “One third of the fleet was grounded, being cannibalized for parts the airline couldn't afford to buy,” he said.

However, 470 new aircraft are now joining the fleet along with “a sizeable number” of leases, which means that Air India is now receiving a new aircraft every six days. Air India’s existing fleet is also being refurbished under a $400 million cabin refit program.

“There remains a large legacy fleet to upgrade,” Wilson said. “The refit of our narrowbody aircraft is progressing well and should be completed by the middle of 2025, but the widebodies have been a constant source of frustration.”

As part of its growth plan, Air India acquired 50 Boeing 737 MAXs that had been manufactured for another airline. These dual-class aircraft are now being reconfigured with a single-class cabin, so they can be deployed by low-cost carrier Air India Express. Of the 50 737 MAXs, 34 have already arrived. The remaining 16 were scheduled for delivery by the end of 2024, but they have been delayed by around six months because of the Boeing production slow-down and strike.

In parallel with production delays, the supply of first- and business-class seats for Air India’s 777s and 787s has been an issue, but Wilson declined to name the companies that have been running late. “When they come to you and say, ‘Oh, it's going be a six-month delay,’ or ‘Sorry, it's going be late, it’s now going to be an 18-month delay,’ that's hugely frustrating,” he said.

Wilson said the first of 40 widebodies will “finally” go into the hangar for cabin refit work in February 2025. The cabin upgrades are now expected to be completed by the end of 2026 or early 2027.

“At the moment, it's not a consistent experience, either operationally or for our customers. You can fly on a brand new [Airbus] A350 on one flight, and you can fly on a 15-year-old 777 that hasn't been upgraded in that long on another,” he said. “Operational reliability with older aircraft has been a challenge, but as we get those aircraft healthy and get access to the components and parts, that's also improving.”

Air India’s former engineering unit was not included in the privatization and is now a separate entity, which Air India was initially tied in to using. However, with that commitment now coming to a close, Air India will bring line maintenance on all aircraft types (apart from Boeing 777s) in house by the end of December. The 777 line maintenance transition is expected to be completed by February or March 2025

Air India is also taking on its own base maintenance. Construction of a 12-bay MRO facility in Bengaluru has just begun and is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2026. A new 86,000 ft.2 purpose-built maintenance training campus in Bengaluru is also scheduled to go live in mid-2026.

India already has the third largest domestic aviation market in the world, growing at around 7% per year, supported by 6% annual GDP growth. Last year, the two largest aircraft orders in history were placed by Indian airlines, which now have a collective backlog of 1,800 aircraft.